Errors in Royal Society of NZ climate change paper

The Royal Society of New Zealand has again
nailed its sorry little tail to the mast of a sinking global
warming ship, with a statement designed to convince news
media, politicians and the public that the science behind
climate change is sound.

The latest paper comes in the wake of
embarrassing errors discovered in the UN’s AR4 report, and
of course the Climategate disaster which revealed scientists
conspiring to prevent studies they disagreed with from being
published.

What makes the latest RSNZ paper embarrassing
are some basic errors and cobbled together assumptions.
Let’s take a look at a couple.

The RSNZ prefaces its
points with these words:

“The evidence pointing towards
AGW comes from multiple independent lines of argument, each
pointing in the same direction. It is not the intention of
this article to labour this point, but a few examples
follow:”

Professor Keith Hunter, FNZIC, FRSNZ,
Vice-President - Physical Sciences, Mathematics, Engineering
and Technology, Royal Society of New Zealand, says this is
one of those incontrovertible facts:

“The amount of
extra carbon accumulated in the ocean and the atmosphere
matches the known quantity emitted by the combustion of
fossil fuels.”

Except, he appears to have forgotten that
there’s a discrepancy between what’s been emitted and
how much remains in the atmosphere, known as “the missing carbon sink”. In other
words, the Royal Society is wrong. The emissions don’t
match.

The Royal Society’s Hunter also states:

“It
is also clear that the oceans absorb about 85% of the excess
heat resulting from this radiative forcing by greenhouse
gases (as well as about 40% of the carbon dioxide). Detailed
measurements of the changes in oceanic heat content, and the
temperature rise that accompanies this, agree quantitatively
with the predicted radiative forcing.”

Which would be
fine, except that the oceans are not warming up much at all,
which the Argo project, discussed in Air Con, found, and
which has also been detected in another study last year:

“Annual
mean heat storage values have been determined for the full
period 1999–2005 (Table 2) and these indicate that the
heat storage change is not significantly different from zero
within the error of the estimate for all boxes.”

Indeed, in 2008 the Argo project’s Josh Willis was
forced to admit there had been no warming in the upper 700
metres of the oceans for four years. One analysis even found
a slight cooling:

Even the appalling SkepticalScience
site beloved of the AGW community admits through gritted teeth that we are
not witnessing spectacular ocean warming at
present:

“The bottom line is there is still uncertainty
over the reconstruction of ocean heat. Generally, the
various reconstructions show the same long term trends but
don't always agree over short periods. The uncertainty means
one cannot conclude with confidence that the ocean is
cooling. Independent analysis seem to indicate that over
last half dozen years, the ocean has shown less warming than
the long term trend...”

So I’d be fascinated to know
who gave the Royal Society of New Zealand the daft advice
not only that the oceans are significantly warming,
but that they are warming demonstrably and
primarily as a result of greenhouse gas emissions. A
cite should be provided for Professor Hunter’s claim that:
“Detailed measurements of the changes in oceanic heat
content, and the temperature rise that accompanies this,
agree quantitatively with the predicted radiative
forcing.”

Given that there are massive discrepancies in
the radiation budget, it seems a surprisingly silly
statement for the Royal Society of New Zealand to
make.

“The main
point I am making here is that, no matter whether you assume
the climate system is sensitive or insensitive, our best
satellite measurements suggest that the climate system is
perfectly capable of causing internally-generated radiative
forcing larger than the “external” forcing due to
increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. Low
cloud variations are the most likely source of this internal
radiative forcing. It should be remembered that the
satellite data are actually measured, whereas the CO2
forcing (red lines in the above graphs) is so small that it
can only be computed theoretically.

“The satellite
observed trend toward less energy loss (or, if you prefer,
more energy gain) is interesting since there was no net
warming observed during this time. How could this be? Well,
the satellite observed trend must be due to forcing only
since there was no warming or cooling trend during this
period for feedback to act upon. And the lack of warming
from this substantial trend in the forcing suggests an
insensitive climate system.”

Spencer is not the only one
to pick some kind of “internally-generated radiative
forcing” that’s stronger than CO2, with a new study
out this week suggesting exactly that. Additionally, it
turns out computer models relied on the UN IPCC may have
been badly programmed on cloud
impacts.

Clouds appear to play a much bigger role in
regulating the heat that reaches the oceans and which leaves
the sea surface. Additionally, oceanic heat is not being
primarily affected by “radiative forcing by greenhouse
gases” but by natural oscillations.

Then
Keith Hunter says this:

“Furthermore, satellite
altimetry shows clearly that the sea level has risen by the
amount expected as a result of the warming-induced thermal
expansion of the ocean.”

If he’s trying to suggest sea
level increase is unusual or rapidly increasing, then in a
word, “rubbish”.

“Finally, in recent years it has
become clear that salinity increases in the tropical ocean
from enhanced water evaporation, and parallel decreases in
salinity at higher latitudes as the enhanced water vapour
condenses again, consistent with the higher heat content of
the tropical ocean and with observed changes in the
atmosphere.”

Sounds great, but what does it actually
mean? Seriously? He’s describing the hydrologic cycle of evaporation and
rainfall, something that has been happening on earth for,
oh, I don’t know, the last four billion years.

If this is the best evidence the Royal Society of New
Zealand can muster in support of climate change, God help
the Key administration and his beleaguered science advisor
Peter Gluckman, because the people advising National and
Gluckman on climate are NIWA and the Royal Society.

The
news media would be wise to treat with caution the Royal
Society’s ongoing flawed pronouncements on climate change.

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